My mother was just a year younger than her sister. They were good friends, but my mother always felt as if she had taken second place. Her sister was smarter, her sister was prettier and her sister had curly hair. When I was a kid, she said this often enough that I came to accept it as fact.

I was an adult before I looked at some photos of them together and realized that my mother could have been a model. Read more »

A friend’s daughter got engaged over the holidays. Sue says they haven’t set a wedding date yet, but Jessica is already looking at dresses, bands, flowers and locations. They have ruled out a destination wedding; Jessica wants a home town wedding that’s more accessible for family and friends. That doesn’t do a lot to narrow the location, since her home town is in the Palm Beach area. When Sue said she was planning to use a photo booth, I was a bit taken back. Huh? Would the wedding party travel to a booth at a local shopping mart or tourist attraction? How would they cram all those people in formal attire into one of those phone booth size spaces?Read more »

Anyone, who purchases a hundred year old house, should enjoy home improvement projects. I recently posted about my lack of plumbing finesse, but when it came to paper and paint, I was a pro. I began wallpapering out of necessity and learned to love it.

Old houses have had plenty of time to settle and that process can create a number of unsightly cracks and bulges that are difficult to mask with just spackle and paint. With fourteen rooms, I knew it would be a long while Read more »